How to Fix the FPS Drop Issue in World of Warcraft

Many players are experiencing FPS drops in WoW’s Dragonflight expansion—particularly those who use Nvidia graphics drivers.

Many factors can cause FPS drops when playing World of Warcraft. This could be because of your graphic settings, outdated drivers, power management, or corrupted game date, just to name a few reasons. However, Dragonflight is already bug-ridden by itself. The expansion is likely to go down as WoW’s most buggy expansion. The community is struggling to complete quests like Nowhere to Hide, suffering lag in the Azure Span thanks to the Community Feasts, and having a hard time farming WoW gold in Mythic+ dungeon runs due to mobs not spawning.

Most players could bypass these issues through quick thinking, but the latest problem has rendered the game unplayable for many of the WoW community using Nvidia drivers. Luckily for you, we know how to solve it.

For Nvidia Users Only

An Nvidia driver update was recently released. Known as Nvidia Driver 528.02, it caused a lot of havoc for Dragonflight players who were using the company’s proprietary GPUs. It’s currently sinking a hefty amount of the frames to single-digit numbers instead of the usual 60 FPS that we’re all used to. This is ruining the gameplay experience, and those who installed the latest update now have frame rates of less than 10. Suffice it to say, it’s providing a lot of difficulty for players traveling around Azeroth using WoW mounts.

It’s worth noting that the solutions we’ll present will only fix most of the problems caused by the 528.02 Nvidia update in World of Warcraft. For example, if you’re having FPS issues with other hardware like AMD, then we’re unlikely to help, but we’ll still provide some troubleshooting methods you could do to your PC.

Fixing the Framerates for Nvidia Users

The likely cause of the FPS drops you’re experiencing is due to the Max Foreground being set to 9 after the 528.02 update. To fix this, here’s what you have to do:

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  Navigate to your Options by hitting Escape.

  
  
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  Go to the Graphics tab and make sure you don’t have Max Foreground enabled. If it’s enabled, disable it.

  
  

This is the first (and easiest) solution to fixing the frame drop issues in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight. If you’re having difficulting finding the Options menu, you can simply click the search bar at the top of the main menu and type in “multisample” to pull up what you need.

Not everyone is experiencing FPS drops, but it’s happened to enough people that it warrants a solution to be searched. If that doesn’t solve your problem, perhaps you can find the issue within the Multi-Sample Alpha Test. Here’s an alternate fix:

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  Go to Options again by pressing the Escape button.

  
  
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  Under the Graphics tab, you’ll find the Anti-Aliasing sub-menu and the Multi-Sample Alpha Test within it.

  
  
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  Disable the Multi-Sample Alpha Test if it’s enabled.

  
  

If you still have FPS drops left and right, then maybe it’s time to use the Nvidia GeForce Experience application. You can use the app to update your drivers; if you prefer having the best performance in exchange for lowering the quality of WoW’s visuals, you can change the graphic settings using the Nvidia control panel. You can also apply this to those who have an AMD GPU by using the Radeon Software.

What About AMD Users?

Don’t feel left out, AMD users—there are fixes to try for your side as well. First, you should try some general fixes, such as closing the resource-heavy programs you have running in the background. Your PC’s system resources may be limited if you have other apps running while playing World of Warcraft. If your PC can only meet the minimum system requirements for WoW, you must close any unused applications and programs you have. Plus, as we’ve stated before, it’s a possibility that you only have to update your drivers through the Radeon Software. Lastly, you could update your Operating System (OS) to the latest version.

If the general stuff still doesn’t work out, another reason could result in stuttering, low FPS, and performance issues: addons and addon manager programs. As with every new expansion in WoW, some of your addons might not be up-to-date for Dragonflight. We advise you to temporarily disable all your addons and addon manager to fix the performance issues. Then, update them all—one by one—and check your FPS after each update to find the culprit.

Should that be ineffective, we offer you a last resort, resetting the WoW User Interface. If it’s still a failure, you have no choice but to contact Blizzard’s customer service for your respective region.

All Fixed Up

Thankfully, the issue with the Nvidia drivers is relatively easy to fix, even if you’re not a tinkerer. We’ve offered all possible ways to fix the performance issues in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight. Hopefully, this will make you farm WoW gold faster now. It’s a great time to play the MMO, too, with significant updates on the way.